The present invention relates generally to call centers and other types of communication processing systems, and more particularly to systems in which customer and agent terminals are configurable over a network.
Call centers generally distribute calls and other types of communications, e.g., e-mails, faxes, voice messages, text messages, Internet service requests, etc. to or from available service agents, in accordance with various predetermined criteria. However, the role of the call center is broadening to address the entire relationship an enterprise has with its customers, as opposed to merely managing individual transactions. This expanded role of the call center is commonly referred to as customer relationship management (CRM).
Most conventional call centers are configured in a disk-centric manner. In other words, a given agent terminal is typically implemented as a personal computer (PC) or other type of workstation having a disk-based storage medium which stores software for running the terminal. The operating systems used on such terminals are designed with the assumption that the terminals will include such disk-based storage media. As a result, each of the terminals generally must execute a boot procedure in order to start its operation. Additional features such as audio, video and multimedia processing are also generally implemented utilizing PC-based or workstation-based application software and corresponding hardware elements configured so as to be compatible among the different terminals of the call center. The implementation of such features in the call center may require that the customer be provided with corresponding software, hardware or other processing system elements compatible with those features.
The conventional disk-centric approach described above has a number of significant drawbacks. For example, call centers configured in this conventional manner rely heavily on particular types of vendor software specific to each application. This in turn unduly restricts the range of audio, video and multimedia features that can be used to interact with customers. Other problems include excessive down time, installation difficulties, software compatibility issues, and overly burdensome interface, speed and memory requirements. As a result of these and other problems, the disk-centric approach prevents call centers from being able to evolve quickly and efficiently in a cost effective manner.
A need therefore exists for an improved technique for implementing call centers and other communication processing systems, such that the above-noted limitations of the conventional disk-centric approach are avoided.
The present invention provides a network-centric call center or other communication processing system that is implemented in a manner which avoids the need for disk-based memory at agent and customer terminals.
In accordance with one aspect of the invention, the communication processing system includes a network having a number of agent terminals associated therewith, and one or more processing elements enabled to support a distributed system deployment protocol such as the Jini protocol. The processing elements may include, for example, a web channel manager element coupled to one or more customer terminals over the Internet, and a computer-telephony integration (CTI) controller coupled to one or more customer terminals via a public switched telephone network (PSTN), a private branch exchange (PBX) switch, or other type of communication network element. The distributed system deployment protocol is utilized in the communication processing system to configure one or more of the agent terminals for communication with customer terminals via the processing element(s) in order to provide designated services. The agent and customer terminals are also preferably enabled in accordance with the protocol such that configuration of these terminals to support and to utilize call center services is implementable without requiring the use of disk-based memory at the terminals.
The distributed system deployment protocol in an illustrative embodiment comprises a discovery protocol, a join protocol and a lookup protocol. The discovery protocol allows a given one of the terminals to receive information from the system upon connection thereto so as to allow it to implement the join and lookup protocols. The join protocol allows a given one of the terminals to register with a lookup service to provide a particular type of service supported by that terminal. The lookup protocol is utilized by a given one of the terminals to identify elements of the system able to provide particular types of services.
Advantageously, a network-centric call center or other communication processing system in accordance with the present invention avoids the drawbacks associated with the conventional disk-centric approach previously described, and thus allows the implementation of substantially more efficient and effective customer relationship management (CRM). Moreover, the invention is particularly well suited for implementation in a hosted software environment in which clients interact with service providers over a network to obtain desired call center services.